Ppaeppaero Day

November 11th is an unofficial holiday for children and couples, as I found out yesterday. It's kind of like Valentine's Day. Apparently, 11/11 reminds them of a bunch of sticks, so not too many years ago, it became popular to give chocolate-covered wafer or pretzel sticks, called Ppaeppaero to friends, relatives, and teachers. (My romanization is based on the standard that I always use, but I've been seeing it online as Pepero.)

The inception of this pseudoholiday is somewhat apocryphal, but the general consensus seems to be that a company called Lotte, which is a major Korean producer of everything imaginable, including chocolate sticks, made up the holiday for capital gain. I did read one story that suggested that some schoolgirls in Busan started the tradition in 1994 because they wanted to grow as tall and slender as the Ppaeppaero, but it seems unlikely that the practice would spread so effectively from that beginning.

So today, my students gave me three boxes of original Lotte Ppaeppaero, one box of chocolate-coffee-latte (or something, I forget 'cause I ate 'em all) Ppaeppaero, and five or six large chocolate pretzel sticks. I don't like the big ones so much, because a chocolate-covered pretzel isn't very good unless it has salt on it. Damn them for not realizing that.


Here are a couple pictures of the Engrish on the pretzel wrappers:

This is a box of the original Ppaeppaero. You can see the name in Hangeul here:

On the Lotte box, it says "Since 1983," so I asked the kids and one of the Korean teachers if that referred to Lotte or to the holiday, and she said it was Lotte, so the holiday is definitely less than 25 years old.

Some of the boxes even have little cards built into the back so you can write messages. Here's a message from Kate:

Here's another message written directly on the bag (which is inside the box):

It's funny, I think I got the bags without the boxes because some of the boxes have the same kind of contests our candies have. Lotte owns cinemas, and if you find a ticket in your box, you can use it for a free movie at Lotte Cinema. So I think they checked before giving me the candy, haha. Wesley told me about that. Such a nice boy.

I was thinking about why this got so popular on the way home tonight, and I decided that Koreans have all these extra fun candy and present days (White Day, Children's Day, etc.), because life sucks so much here, what with 12-15 hours of homework or work six days a week for most people. Kids and young people have these holidays, and adults have binge drinking every night. It seems to work well for them.

Leafing and Human Sacrifice

A couple weeks ago, Heather took Leon and I with her whole family to a mountain in Eonyang, a neighboring city, to see the foliage. It's quite nice.

First we went to Heather's parents' house in the countryside of Ulsan. This is their place:


That's Heather's mom coming out of the house, her sister-in-law with little Jiseok (my favorite Korean), Kate (Heather's daughter) in the foreground, and Jane (Jiseok's sister) in front of Heather's grandmother off to the right:



Atop the mountain was a temple with female monks. There was some confusion as to which sex was actually in residence at the temple, since both men and women monks were there, but somehow someone figured out that it was women. The men must have been visiting. There was even an American monk there, and she said hi to us, but only Leon heard her and responded.

Here is a bridge we saw at the temple and were not allowed on. Monks only:


One of the buildings at the temple from outside the entrance:

Mountains, and parking lot:

Me and some trees:

More mountain:

I took this picture from the car:

Heather was telling us all these crazy stories about Buddhist temples for some reason. She was saying that women used to come to the temples when they couldn't have a son. They would pray to the statues, and the monks would "help" them. Heather got a big kick out of telling that one. It reminded me of Dad's old joke about the kids looking like the milkman.

She also told us that people sometimes sacrifice their babies to the monks, who would make huge bells out of metal and babies melted and molded together. Heather said it makes the bells sound different once complete. She told us the temples were generally built in places with dark histories, because the people there needed to sacrifice their children to atone for evil deeds. Very, very strange.

I think she got her story a bit wrong, though. She seemed to be saying that this happened (and still happens) not infrequently, but the legend seems to be a one-time thing, with one specific bell. I found this entry on the internets:

The Gyeongju National Museum holds many beautiful artifacts inside and outside the main buildings. The centerpiece is the very large Divine Bell of King Songdok, constructed in 711 A.D. Upon its debut the sound which rang forth was not the sweet sound anticipated, but a dull cracking sound. Each subsequent design failed to produce the desired effect, so it was determined a child sacrifice was necessary to obtain a perfect bell. Legend states a poor farm woman offered her daughter, who was thrown into the melting copper pot. The bell made from this copper appeared to be singing, “Emille” — “Mommy.” To this day, people mourn for this child.

It's funny, I went the that museum a few months ago, and I vaguely remember there being a bell there, outside. I didn't know anything about the legend, though. I read a couple different versions of the child sacrifice online--one said it had to be a purehearted child, another said it had to be a child born in the year, month, week, day, and minute of the Dragon and there was a mighty search held to find one. At least it was only one child in the legend, and not as rampant as Heather suggested.

Halloween

On Halloween, my school had a Halloween party, in which we gave candy to the kids and watched Halloween movies instead of learning. We were supposed to get a projector and have one big screen for everybody all day, but the dude who was going to lend it to the school ended up needing it at his work. Booooo-urns. So instead, those of us with laptops downloaded movies and played them for each of our classes. I gave my classes the choice of "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown," "The Nightmare Before Christmas," and "Wallace and Gromit and the Curse of the Were Rabbit." The two latter were 80 minute movies, so most of the kids either saw the first half or the second half, but they didn't notice. They could barely sit through that.

Most of the kids didn't dress up, since it's not a widely accepted holiday here, but some did. Here are some pictures:

This is Nancy:


I think this is Kevin:


This is Jack. He played video games somewhat noisily the whole time, and complained about the amount of candy I gave out. He's my biggest shithead and one of my biggest dumbshits.



Some of the other kids in the same class also spent the whole time playing video games:

Amy, Na-huin, Nancy, and Kevin, enthralled by Wallace and Gromit:

Hollis, John, Pam (yes, he's a boy with a girl's name), Lauren, and Bunny watching Charlie Brown. Hollis particularly enjoyed this show, although some of the kids found it a little boring at times.

In addition to the above, Harris in the front, and Any in the back. Harris sulked for a few minutes because he didn't like the cartoon, then he asked to go out in the hall. I let him go because none of the kids like him and he's a Ruiner.

Back left to right: Sally, Ava, Lucy, Jenny, and Jessica (Jessica came as a Korean--this is hanbok, traditional Korean clothing). Front: Patrick, Major, and Joey

Back: Sean, Albert, Martin, Wendy, and Celina

Front: Teresa, Erin, and some girl Erin brought with her who isn't a student at our school, I don't think.

Wendy, Erin, and Stranger:

Some kid isn't my student:

Two other kids who aren't my students:

Albert again:

There are pictures of me with the other teachers and staff in existence, but I need to ask them to email them to me so I can add them. I dressed as a witch because all the kids said I laugh like a witch.

Oh, Those Kids

It's been quite interesting to see how the kids perceive us foreigners, especially in terms of family matters. I've had a number of odd conversations and interactions regarding my family situation, or in many cases, my lack thereof.

A few months ago I was talking to the kids about what happens on Christmas, and I went through my family's routine, which involved mentioning going to different houses to have Christmas with each parent. This really confused the kids, so I had to explain that my parents are divorced. They were barely aware of this concept, as it's pretty rare and strongly discouraged in this culture. In fact, several of my students told me it's illegal in this country, but I've checked and it's not. I explained to the class what divorce is, having to explain it as if they were three (they were all 11-12), what with the somewhat limited English understanding compounding the fact that the idea of married people separating is inconceivable to them. I actually spent the entire class explaining it, because the kids kept asking questions. I knew it was mostly just a ploy to distract me from the lesson, but I never shy away from teaching them Western culture in addition to English, because I know it makes them learn something, even if they don't realize it. This conversation reminded me a lot of the divorce conversation I had with my host brother in Kenya, in which he suggested I bring my parents on Queen Latifah's talk show to get them back together. That was awesome.

In addition to the alien idea of having parents who aren't either happily married or pretending to be, I am also a few months from age 30 (by THEIR count) and unmarried. Bizarro. Kids are constantly asking me why I'm not married, or why I don't even have a boyfriend (whom they would assume I'd be married to within three months, as that seems to be the custom here at this age). When I say I oppose marriage, they say, but babies are so cute. Don't you want babies? And I say, you don't have to be married to have babies. And they get confused, the younger ones at least.

My first graders have lately been pretending I actually am married for some reason. They got on my case a few days ago when Leon (the new teacher) came in to get a book and they all said you LIIIIIKE him, you're MARRRRRIED, because for them it's natural that the only foreigners they know must get together. Back when Steven was around and he was the only other foreigner at our branch of Kate LA, they used to ask me if I liked him and all that. I just told them he's already married, and that shut them up, thank god. I can't do that with Leon, though. Leon, why aren't you married?

Then the day after this happened, one of my second graders was patting my stomach because it's not perfectly flat and I was wearing a form-fitting sweater. He said something about there being a baby in there, and the other boy in the class latched onto the idea and started giving me pretend medical exams with pens and erasers and stuff, talking about my baby. The girls picked up on it, too, and they all started naming my baby. They named it Blia Q. because B comes after A and Q comes after P, and the baby has to have my name, but with different letters at the beginning. That's a rule they made up on their own, of course. Then Danny, the one giving the "exam" wrote this message on a post-it note and posted it on my stomach:

After that, Danny "found" another baby in my stomach and the twin ended up being named Chalia Q. Haha. They also said that Kent was the father because I have a picture of us riding an elephant in the room.

A few days before, the same boy, Danny, was asking me if I got married and had a kid, would it be Korean? And I said that would depend on the father. I think half my kids are assuming I'm going to get married to a Korean guy while I'm here. The other half assume it will be Leon. The pressure. Anyway, Danny said what if I married a Korean man, and I said the baby would be a hybrid. Then he started talking about if I had the baby in London, and I was like, what are you TALKING about? He defended: for example, for example. Then I said the baby would be the same no matter where it was born. Then he said could I have a baby that was totally Korean, and I said, no, because I'm not Korean. And he conceded, but he said when I have a baby, I should say it's Korean and say "America is bad" and teach it only Korean and not English. He's a nationalist.